The threat of potential loss of lives or injuries at the time of an emergency landing or interruption of take-off demands swift and reliable removal of passengers from the aircraft. The trend toward larger aircraft with a concomitant increase in passengers makes the reliability of emergency evacuation systems even more critical. Problems typically affecting reliability of inflatable aircraft escape slides, such as lack of stability during use and deployment have become more acute with the advent of super-jumbo aircraft. Such aircraft carry a large number of passengers and include an upper deck passenger area located at a substantial distance from the ground. Evacuation of passengers from super-jumbo aircraft is facilitated by providing localized or individual exits positioned as close to the passenger seating areas as possible. Among examples of such localized emergency evacuation exits are the doors provided at the upper deck level which require special inflatable system capable of reliably evacuating passengers from the levels of high elevation. These systems also require sufficient stability during deployment, a high degree of perceived safety, adequate deceleration means to optimize sliding velocity and multiple lanes to maximize traffic.
Thus, there has been a long felt and unsolved need to equip the upper deck area of a super-jumbo multi deck aircraft with a multiple lane inflatable aircraft evacuation slide-raft for use during evacuation of passengers therefrom, having enhanced stability and safety during deployment and operation.
The overwater flights regulations require a carrier to provide not only emergency evacuation slides, but also life rafts in sufficient quantities to accommodate all passengers and crew members. This requirement is especially important for super-jumbo jets commonly used for transcontinental flights. Thus, since the present state of the art requires that aircraft are provided with inflatable evacuation slide devices and inflatable life rafts, there has been a need for an inflatable evacuation slide serving the upper deck areas of super-jumbo jets; to be utilizable for ground and overwater evacuation of passengers and, in the latter case, adapted for use as inflatable life rafts.